As Richard Holbrooke embarked on a campaign to bully and browbeat the Bosnian belligerents in the spring of 1995, the British Ambassador to Belgrade, Ivor Roberts, cautioned him not to disregard the region’s history. Holbrooke famously brushed him off by saying the locals’ view of history was their problem; his was "to end a war."

The Dayton Agreement did just that. Conflict continued, and a peace that Dayton offered a possibility for never truly materialized – but the treaty has provided a successful containment field for Bosnia’s political fission pile, and for that it is due credit. Yet just three years later, the newly minted Atlantic Empire refused to play by its own rules and launched a new Balkans war.

Today, Imperial envoys and their Eurocrat allies insist on "stability" in the Balkans, by which they mean that the situation they imposed by subterfuge and coercion should be enshrined as permanent. That is obviously not appealing to those who have lost out in the process, but neither does it satisfy Empire’s clients, who think they could gain more still.

Last week, former ambassador Roberts – now Sir Ivor, and president of Trinity College at Oxford – gave an interview to a major Serbian daily, arguing that a new Congress of Berlin might be necessary to sort out the remaining conflicts, adjust some borders, and offer the Balkans a chance to move on. He stressed it was his personal opinion, though it is extremely unlikely he didn’t run it by the Foreign Office first.

While a notion of another Balkans peace conference certainly sounds tempting, in practical terms it is probably too little, too late. Had it happened 20 years ago, much of the bloodshed could have been prevented. By now, however, too many things have been set in motion. One way or another, they will have to play out.

The Balkans Pattern

In July of 1875, the oppressed Serb peasants rose up against Ottoman rule, first in Herzegovina, then in Bosnia. They were backed by the principalities of Serbia and Montenegro, technically still under Ottoman rule but independent in all but name. Even as the Turks were suppressing the uprisings in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgarians launched a rebellion of their own, and Serbia declared war. Both met with defeat, and European papers soon reported sordid tales of Ottoman brutalities. At this point Russia declared war on the Ottomans. Despite the initial Russian setbacks, by early 1878 the Turks were defeated, and Russian troops were within sight of Istanbul.

Alarmed by Russian successes, Britain and Austria sought to revise the war’s outcome. Thus came about the Congress of Berlin, convened on June 13, 1878 and concluded a month later. As a result of its proceedings, Britain was given Cyprus; Austria marched into Bosnia, Herzegovina and the sanjak of Novibazar; the Ottomans were given back much of the lost territory; while the independence of Serbia, Montenegro, Romania and Bulgaria was officially recognized – albeit not in the borders they wished for.

Bulgaria was particularly affected, and for the next 70 years would pursue the vision of territories promised by the Treaty of San Stefano and taken away in Berlin. Meanwhile, the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina put Austria on collision course with its client regime in Serbia, and ultimately led to the crisis that sparked the Great War.

It is important to note, however, that the Congress of Berlin was part of an already established pattern that started somewhere around 1804 and the first successful Serbian uprising. Balkans Christians would rise up against the Ottoman Empire. The Turks would try and crush them, with more or less success. Russia would get involved, turning the tide. Then other European powers would interfere, not so much to protect the Ottomans but to grab more power for themselves and ensure Russia did not get too strong. The resulting "peace" would satisfy no one, and the cycle would start anew in a few years, with another Christian revolt.

Even the Balkans Alliance of 1912, whose triumph over the Ottoman armies came as a complete surprise to the European powers, could not break the pattern. British and Austrian pressure forced Serbia and Greece out of what became Albania, while the resulting dispute over Macedonia led Bulgaria to turn on its former allies – and lose.

The Congress of Berlin, therefore, failed to bring peace to the Balkans – mostly because it didn’t really bother with it at all, considering the locals as mere pieces on the game board of empires. Worse yet, it contributed to further hostility between Russia and Austria, setting in motion the events that would lead to the conflagration of 1914.

Opportunities Missed and Taken

In 1991, when Yugoslavia began to come apart under internal strife, an opportunity presented itself to resolve the issue peacefully. However, by selectively interpreting Yugoslavia’s constitution, the Conference on Yugoslavia rendered any negotiations meaningless. Austria and Germany pushed for recognition of the separatists republics. Other countries of the coalescing EU soon followed their lead. The resulting conflict, in turn, was used by the United States to become an overt Empire.

The Balkans of today is a product of Imperial intervention, created and maintained by force, deception and propaganda. Those who served Empire’s purposes – e.g. Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, the Albanians or the Bosnian Muslims – feel they should have gained more in the bargain. The Serbs, who lost out at every turn, aren’t willing to concede any more. None are happy with the status quo. Yet the Empire persists in efforts to make it final.

Two senior State Department envoys came to Belgrade this month. Their purpose was not tourism, but to ensure the "new" Serbian administration is as compliant as the preceding one. Meanwhile in Romania, the President has been impeached by a more pro-Imperial Prime Minister. The PM’s new advisor is none other than former NATO commander Wesley Clark, the Bomber of Belgrade. Clark was also mentioned in June as a possible investor in a massive energy project in "Kosovo", leading some observers to conclude that Empire’s meddling in the region is all about economic interests.

While individual players and even factions may seek to personally profit from Imperial ventures, the motive for such ventures is hardly pecuniary. What this Empire, like all its predecessors, cares most about is power. Over the past two decades, it has made the Balkans into a template for dominating the world. Yet for all the pretense that this time it’s different and that some lessons were learned from history, this is precisely the pattern of thinking and behavior exhibited by 19th-century empires. There is truly nothing new under the sun.

Not a Game

The trouble with treating the world as a game board, and nations as pieces, is that the pieces have a will of their own, and that the game has a way of coming to haunt the players. The peasants of Herzegovina who took up arms against Ottoman cruelty could not have known that their act of desperate defiance would set in motion a process that culminated in the Great War. Even if they had known, odds are they would have acted anyway, so desperate was their position.

Attempts to satisfy imperial ambitions at the Congress of Berlin ultimately made appetites greater and the problem worse. Same can be said of Dayton, whose success emboldened the U.S. to initiate force elsewhere. Worse yet, the Empire eventually stopped pretending it was playing by the rules, even though it had made up the rules in the first place.

If the process begun two decades ago in the Balkans is truly finished and irreversible – as Imperial envoys, "analysts" and the media continuously point out – would the Empire really spend that much effort and energy to present it as such? Or is it more likely that history has not ended, and that the "pieces," not the "players," will ultimately decide the outcome of the "game"?

201204092323 Responseshttp%3A%2F%2Foriginal.antiwar.com%2Fmalic%2F2012%2F07%2F19%2Fechoes-of-1878%2FEchoes+of+18782012-07-20+06%3A00%3A51Nebojsa+Malichttp%3A%2F%2Foriginal.antiwar.com%2F%3Fp%3D2012040923 to “Echoes of 1878”

Three weeks! Tha's a step forward! The nub of all of this, as with all these articles, is in the sentence "The Balkans of today is a product of Imperial intervention, created and maintained by force, deception and propaganda". That encapsules the underlying racism of the author's position (and suggests that he does not come from ex-Yugoslavia). The American Empire rules the world! The ever dastardly EU is in its pocket! The Balkan Untermenschen are so primitive and backward that the Empire can carve up their territory and manipulate their elections without them even noticing! Those three sentences sum up all of this author's articles. The rest is just padding.

About the link to lewrockwell blog regarding Romanian political moves.

President Basescu is as pro-US as you can get. Romanian troops are still in Afghanistan in 2012 and there's no certain withdrawal date.

The new prime minister is supported mainly by 2 parties which are certainly pro-imperial as a whole, question might be which flavor has precedence, the EUropean or US, but both imperial sides can feel safe, their interests won't be challenged.

I think about something amazing:the Serbs managed to keep their independence even in Stalin period but today,the "free world"seem to finish it.How Hillary said or maybe Bush :"who is not with us is against us".In Stalin time was still possible.

Technically Romania is not a Balkan state, that's more the area south of the Danube, river which is the natural border for the former Roman then Byzantine empire and even for the Ottomans who practically didn't have a policy of settling or forcefully converting or luring locals to islam beyond the river, which granted us (I'm Romanian) not only autonomy but also avoided later fratricide disputes based on religious differences.

Technically Romania is not a Balkan state, that's more the area south of the Danube, river which is the natural border for the former Roman then Byzantine empire and even for the Ottomans who practically didn't have a policy of settling or forcefully converting or luring locals to islam beyond the river, which granted us (I'm Romanian) not only autonomy but also avoided later fratricide disputes based on religious differences.

Our main link with the Balkans-proper resides in the common Christian orthodox tradition and the fact, all in all, relations are as decent as a long shared history allows with Serbs, Bulgarians or Greeks. On the other hand, we are suspicious about the Russians and their policies, suspicion which is quite rooted in the popular psyche, which makes Romania (also for other reasons) an "odd" country. Maybe not so "odd" like our dear hated neighbours, allies and partners the Hungarians, the other non-Slavs in a "sea" of mostly Slavic peoples, but one can't really compete with Hungarians when it comes to a question of strangeness.

Anyway, the president has no authority to recognise a new state, it's the parliament's prerogative, and most MPs, regardless the party, as overwhelmingly most of the Romanians believe the precedent created in Kosovo is too dangerous for our interests. At the popular level, simpathy for the Serbs counts also, but the politicos don't want to hold this hot potato of Kosovo "independence", no matter what EU or US says. Self preservation, not necessary patriotism.

President Basescu didn't express himself loudly, as he usually does, on the matter, I believe he was satisfied he could leave the issue for others to handle.

Also, he is quite unpopular these days, much more than 5 years ago, for many reasons. As for the "others", I don't think someone should read too much into Wesley Clark being appointed as a sort of councilor for the current prime minister, it's a mere political stunt imo. Not that I've heard a positive opinion about it yet, which is not so surprising since even if we bow to foreign… desires, we don't really like to be reminded… in the face who is who in the world today.

This could very easily be a purely local power struggle, though I do find Clark's presence at least hinting at Imperial meddling. I mentioned it in passing as an illustration of how the Empire views the region: as part of a game board, populated by pieces, not people.

Having just read up on the 1877-78 war, I saw that Romanians provided some crucial military assistance to Russia. I also recall Romania siding with the Entente in 1916-18 (though it suffered terribly for it), and have known from before that it joined the Tripartite Pact aiming at survival, rather than out of ideological affinity for the Reich. So whence the hostility towards Russia – was it from the decades of Communism?

Three weeks must have been really ruinous to your mental health. Holding your breath for an extra weeks, waiting to grace us with your rubbish must've been particularly hard. Amazingly it did not do what it would to any normal human being – extinguish you. But then a weed survives under the most extraordinary circumstances!

Communism, regarded as a product delivered at Romanian doorsteps by Soviet tanks, plays a role, but the animosity is older and it relates to the imperial ambitions of Russia.

When Russia was far, with no common borders, relations looked like being mutually profitable. Even the ill fated Peter the Great's campaign against the Ottomans, whose defeat resulted in more than a century of non-native, directly appointed from Istambul, rulers for the 2 Romanian states of the time (Valachia and Moldova – who sided with and fought along Russia) didn't bring bad blood between us. Later though, when Russian Empire simply took half of Moldova principality (roughly meaning the nowadays state of Moldova) in 1812, the dubious role played in supporting the Greek liberation movement by inciting a Romanian revolution too only to have it stabbed in the back (1821), then the Russian almost direct rule since 1829 towards 1848 we were subject to didn't help. There was also the behaviour of Russian troops in 1917 when the revolutionary foment among the ranks not only disrupted the military balance but forced Romanian troops to disarm and fight the gone rogue former allies, another episode which contributed to the impression Russians are not reliable and brutal when not kept in check, impression stressed even more between the 2 WWars and during the WW2 (with propaganda help, no doubt) by various events.

Closer to our times, the dispute over the current Moldova state kept alive the perception of Russia not being friendly. Add all the harsh years of communism in Moldova where the attempts to dismantle the Romanian culture and even the ethnic element took a heavy toll on the population there.

The Russian as an individual is not hated, there's even a certain affinity for their romantic side, but Russians as an organised (formidable at times) force who disregard the lesser nations when not directly harm them are feared.

The 1877-78 campaign where Romania fought along the Russian army and contributed militarily was preceded by a firm agreement regarding the passing and logistics for Russian troops on Romanian territory, asserting the de facto independence but also a cautionary measure knowing about the painful precedents.

All this doesn't mean other major powers had no interest and stood idly by, no way, so I mostly agree with your article, yet in the larger "balance of power" picture we can find smaller ones, sometimes accurate or distorted reflections of the big picture, sometimes not.

Would be wrong to borrow the manufactured imperial logic where smaller nations don't matter and have no life of their own.

What it doesn't add up was the mentioning of Soros using Clark as an instrument for his plans. Soros is so strongly present inside Romanian "civil society" through a web of organizations, targeted money contributions and training, flaunting Clark could only raise suspicions quicker. While Soros might profit, I believe the main purpose prime minister Ponta came forth with his "councilor" was to boast his "American" support.

For us it will be very simple to understand in which direction the wind is blowing once major sources of wealth change hands or when "investors" pick some natural resource to "develop" it.

But the "accepted" parties (the 2 party alliance seeking to gain full control and the president's party) are treading on thin ice, many people are fed up with all of them and you can never tell what may happen.
—–

A last detail, important imo. We finally have a competent finance minister and it appears he is allowed some room to maneuver. In my translation, this means the FMI-EU directorate had to let a less obedient, more professional team to handle management in the colony only to avoid worse evolutions. Worse for them, that is. Didn't figure yet if this should be reason for optimism or not.

Young Malic is no historian. Where are his credentials? Who is this man who fled war in Bosnia? Why did he not man-up, and enter battle? And if he chose not to defend his tribe, or narod or homeland, what is his defense? To put it another way, does young Malic have creds as a real historian or a real war vet? If not, why shouldl we care what this coward has to say.

Well Nory I guess personal hate is no rational for discussion here. That belongs to professional Medical expertise and I urge you to use it.
And please don’t teach your kids that kind of hate. Please let them to be normal people.
I don’t think he ever said he is historian but did you stayed with your own people cleansing all those Chetcniks from their own land…did you ?
I guess you must be proud of that ..right.
If he stayed with his own tribe ( what is the name of your Tribe ? ) he would be Chetchink again anyway.
I guess been “coward “ as you said his hand are not bloody as your since he would be in Kangaroo Court sent by the same International
Nazi’s you supporting so strongly..

"Nory", you question my character based on a very loose interpretation of my short bio listed on this page, and claim I have no standing to speak.
Turnabout is fair play. You have questions about my character? I'll be happy to answer them, but with only one condition: you first.

Nory is asking for credentials, but "nory" can't even think. There is no direct or necessary connection between "credentials" (diplomas etc.) and courage. And many bad people do fight in wars and they also do many bad things; that does not give these "real war vets" any intellectual or ethical superiority over others. On the other hand, analyzing Empire and telling truth to power (i.e., Empire) takes guts, and, on both sides of the Atlantic, you don't find that many courageous voices. So let's give "nory" a prize for stupidity and let's listen to people like Malic who have actually something of substance to say.

"Nory's" obsession with Malic's 'credentials' stems from the usual blogging rants of the documented Ustasha crimes' deniers, Hoare, Toljaga & Co. Utterly ridiculous, needless to say. Malic's academic credentials would be a legitimate question if the guy applied for a professor or a chair at some History Dept. It is up to Malic himself to pursue/not pursue further academic expertise and career, while at this website he writes as a political commentator, where his academic credentials are of no relevance whatsoever (Antiwar.com not being a POLITICAL website, not a historical/sociological institute).

It gets really boring, hearing them nauseatingly implying (and libeling) that Malic somehow introduces himself falsely. A "a historian who specializes in international relations" as briefly stated in his biography, means simply what it is: the guy has a university degree in History, which makes him a HISTORIAN by the very sense of the word. His interests and knowledge are focused onto international matters, and can be challenged and discussed AS SUCH, not with this sort of miserable geekish pedantry ("Oh, HE'S NOT a 50 years old PhD and he DARES writing on politics?"). Get a life, losers.

"On the other hand, analyzing Empire and telling truth to power (i.e., Empire) takes guts, and, on both sides of the Atlantic, you don't find that many courageous voices."

Scribbling some nonsense on a website doesn't take any "guts". Malic knows he is not going to be arrested, no matter what he writes. The West that he loathes so much guarantees the freedom of speech. But it's typically Serb behaviour, trying to present oneself as a "hero" and as a potential "victim" at the same time, without any ground in reality.

WHEN and WHERE did Malic write ANYTHING that would even remotely qualify as "loathing the West"? Quotes, please, otherwise, you're just the same nazi troll that you've always been (since these charmingly revealing Freudianisms like "typical Serb behavior" disclose much more of your true feelings than anything said/written by Malic).

Anyway, I'm asking you this as a longtime AWC's reader, having been familiar with (among other AWC stuff) Malic's writings for some ten years. Calling the Empire for what it is hardly equals with "loathing the West". The man lives in America, adheres to a (distinctly Western) set of political values (classical liberalism/libertarianism/antiwar activism, as the majority of AWC writers does) and seems to be concerned with the political positions taken by his country in the international matters. Since when is a legitimate criticism paired with "loathing"? By your bizarre logic, Malic would qualify as "losthing Balkans" much more, since the gigantic portion of this column's regular (and legitimate) critique is DIRECTLY focused onto the shameful deeds by the comprador bourgeois political classes of the present Balkan statelets, Serbia included. By this very same bizarre logic of yours, ANY critique of ANY segment of, say, Japan's, China's, Russia's, or Papua New Guinea's policy would equal as 'loathing' these countries and their peoples.

Nebojsa Malic left his home in Bosnia after the Dayton Accords and currently resides in the United States. During the Bosnian War he had exposure to diplomatic and media affairs in Sarajevo. As a historian who specializes in international relations and the Balkans, Malic has written numerous essays on the Kosovo War, Bosnia, and Serbian politics. His exclusive column for Antiwar.com debuted in November 2000.